by John Shirley
“I’m scared, Mommy,” Becky signed. She didn’t know the sign for terrified, and Alice wasn’t sure there was one. They needed one now.
“It’s going to be okay,” Alice signed back. It was easier to lie when no one could hear your voice. She put an arm around the girl as the Prius raced through an intersection—
And was T-boned by a massive garbage truck—a mountain of metal that seemed to come out of nowhere.
The world spun sickeningly as the car flipped over and rolled. Alice clasped Becky protectively close as the windshield shattered. Metal crumpled, the side windows cracked and broken glass spun about like hail in a whirlwind. Alice lost her grip on the baseball bat and it vanished in the chaos.
Becky made an “Eeeeee!” sound in her throat as the car rolled—and then fell silent as the car skidded on its rooftop, trailing sparks, finally coming to a halt upside down, smoke billowing up around them.
Fire. We could be burned alive in here…
Hands shaking, Alice unclasped Becky’s seat belt and eased her down to the overturned car roof. She undid her own seat belt and wriggled down beside her. She felt battered, bruised, yet intact, but Becky was hyperventilating, staring, apparently in shock.
“Are you hurt?” Alice signed.
Becky didn’t respond. Alice shook her, gently, and locked eyes with her. But the child’s gaze wandered away, her eyes going in and of focus. Alice signed again.
“Baby… look at me! Can you move?”
Still no reply. Becky’s fingers were silent.
“I’m going to get out so I can pull you free,” Alice signed.
Becky just stared.
Alice coughed as smoke swirled more thickly around them, and crawled out through the bent, wrenched-open door, getting to her knees, immediately turning to pull her daughter out, hands gripping her upper arms, trying to not to drag her through broken glass.
She got Becky clear, all the time looking for the Undead. She saw some in the distance, past the steaming truck. She couldn’t see the driver of the totaled vehicle—just a splash of blood running down the inside of the crack-webbed windshield.
Becky sat up, hugging herself, rocking, and put her thumb in her mouth, sucking it like a baby.
Alice knelt by the front of the car, looked in to see Rain—or whoever she was—hanging upside down from her seat belt, her jacket making it difficult to see. She didn’t appear to be breathing—most likely she was dead. Her hair and arms dangled down limply… a little blood dripped down from a gash on her head.
If she was dead, or dying, would she resurrect as Undead? Alice wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t going to risk Becky by sticking around and finding out.
Glancing around, as if through a haze, Alice saw that they were on the edge of a housing estate she’d passed by many times on the way to the supermarket. The sign over the gate read SUNDOWN MEADOWS. One of the big, split-level homes was burning out of control, almost entirely consumed by a single great red-and-blue flame. But there was no sign of fire trucks.
The next house’s roof was caved in by something that she had to stare at for a moment to recognize— it was the crashed, warped wreckage of a news helicopter, embedded in the top of the garage. Its rotor blades were still lazily turning, swirling the gray smoke that rose from its engine.
Alice looked at her daughter—Becky was still in a state of shock.
Movement down the block caught her eye. A cluster of Undead, gathered at the next corner, was turning their way.
Time to get a move on. But it was hard to know which way to turn. It seemed as if nowhere was really safe. Suddenly Alice felt sick to her stomach; felt pins and needles in her feet and hands.
Is it a concussion from the wreck? But she didn’t have time for that. “Come on,” she signed to Becky, and scooped her daughter up, felt Becky’s legs reflexively clasp her around the waist as she carried her toward the upscale housing project—one large home, directly across from them, seemed intact, might be untouched. Perhaps the people had fled, had gotten away. Maybe there were no Undead inside— because there was no one there to eat.
Arms and back aching, Alice forced herself to run. They crossed the street and she climbed the porch stairs of the big house. The door was slightly ajar, as if someone had left in a hurry. She kicked it open the rest of the way with one foot and carried Becky inside, set her on her feet.
The house seemed empty.
Becky began coming out her fugue. She looked vaguely around, and then signed, with jerky movements of her hands.
“What… are we… going… to do?”
“We’re going to be safe,” Alice signed. Lying with my fingers, she thought. “Someone will come and help us.”
“What about Daddy?”
Alice licked her lips, assumed a neutral expression.
“Daddy’s going to be okay. We’ll see him soon.” She couldn’t face telling Becky what she suspected, not right now. Later, if they lived, there’d be time to grieve for Todd.
She went to the door and looked out at the intersection, the still smoking car wreck, and the woman she thought of as “Rain”… who was moving. Rain was struggling, still hanging upside down in the smoking car but clearly alive after all, trying to get out of her seat belt.
I should go and help her…
But then Alice saw the pack of Undead scurrying toward the overturned vehicle. She couldn’t get there and help the woman before the Undead reached her. Suppressing a sob, and feeling a hot stab of shame, Alice closed and locked the door before she would have to see the Undead overwhelm the young woman who’d just tried to help.
Alice took a long breath and turned away from the door.
Focus on right now.
On survival.
On Becky.
“Upstairs,” she signed. They climbed the carpeted stairs. When they branched, she turned left, up stairs with a wooden banister, leading them to the second floor.
There Alice looked in each room they came to. Extensive, perfectly matching furnishings—showing the hand of an interior decorator. No sign of human beings, though. In a bedroom was a dresser with most of its drawers pulled out, as if someone had packed as fast as they could.
At the end of the hallway Alice found a nursery, unoccupied, a rumpled blanket in an empty crib. Becky seemed attracted to the little room, and walked into it as if in a trance. Alice followed her in, looking around. It was a nursery for a baby girl, judging from the decorations, the pink curtains.
They closed the door behind them, thinking that the Undead who’d gone after Rain might’ve seen them go into the house. They had to hide, and soon. Somewhere Becky might feel safe.
Then Alice froze, listening. She’d heard a thump from the front of the house—and another. The sound of someone breaking down a door.
Downstairs.
She went to the louver doors of the closet, and slid them open, turned to Becky and signed.
“Inside—quick!”
Becky walked into the closet, still moving like a ghost, and Alice slipped in beside her, closing the doors. A little light angled through the tiny slat between the two halves, but otherwise they were in a darkness that smelled of old clothes, carpeting and dust. A few items of toddler clothing, perhaps left over from another child, were hung on plastic hangers overhead. On the floor was a folded pink comforter.
Alice and Becky sat down, and Alice leaned back against the wall, clasping her daughter to her. At least she didn’t have to tell her not to speak.
They waited. She could feel Becky’s heart racing, under her hands.
A shudder seemed to go through the house—then silence, for ten distinct heartbeats.
The quiet was broken by shuffling footsteps, the sound of someone making a slobbering growl.
A piece of furniture overturning, the crash of glass breaking.
They were coming.
Alice fought with herself to remain motionless, perfectly still. Maybe the Undead wouldn’t find them; maybe the creatures would simply give
up and go away. But then she heard one of them fumbling at the doorknob to the nursery. Pulling the door open.
Through the slats in the louver doors, Alice saw a shadow darken the room—and an Undead walked stiffly in, its movements lizardlike. It had once been a young man, a burly, broad-shouldered college student, still wearing the blue-and-white team jacket with a football insignia. The lower half of its face was finger-painted with blood, and its hair was slicked back with red gore.
Becky whimpered.
Alice put her hand over the girl’s mouth.
The Undead looked around, sniffing the air. Angrily, it upended a table of toys, scattering them across the floor. A toy monkey rolled, and came to a stop on its back, clashing its cymbals together.
The Undead shook itself, as if it had a bad chill, and turned toward the door. It was going away.
Alice felt a long shudder of relief.
Then the creature stopped on the threshold. Turned its head—and opened its mouth, wide. Wider… and wider still, till it split its face unnaturally. Something was forcing its way out of its mouth, as if being born—something like mandibles, each one about seven inches long. Four in all, shaped almost like large barbed stems of coral, dripping with blood and sputum.
The mandibles waved about as if they were sense organs… as well as weapons.
She knew, somehow, that they were both.
Becky made an unconscious squeaking sound— and her eyes widened as she saw the Undead’s mandibles waving, seeking, snuffling at the air. The thing turned around, searching for them, sensing, now, that they were close at hand.
Alice signed to Becky.
“Whatever happens, you stay here.” Becky looked at up at her, open mouthed, staring, rigid with fear.
Hands trembling, Alice forced herself to sign.
“I’ll come back for you. I promise.”
She reached for the blanket, began to cover Becky with it.
“I love you, Mommy,” Becky signed.
Eyes hot with tears, Alice responded.
“I love you, too.”
5
Alice pulled the comforter over Becky, aware of the Undead standing just outside the closet door. She felt it looming; she could smell the reek of it.
She got slowly to her feet as the Undead pawed at the door—took a breath, and threw the doors open, the edge of one catching the creature on its down-tilted head, making it stagger back, lose its footing.
The thing crashed against the crib, smashing it, entangling in its blankets and hinged fragments. It thrashed for just a couple of moments, long enough for Alice to slam the closet doors shut.
As long as it didn’t see her…
When she turned, the Undead was freeing itself, getting to its feet, mandibles gnashing furiously. Alice raced toward the door, the living dead man stumbling and lurching along behind her, raking the back of her right shoulder with its grasping, clawlike fingernails.
She went through the door, tried to slam it in the Undead’s face, but it slapped the door aside and came after her. So she ran. She was partway to the stairs when it lunged, grabbed her around the waist, and knocked her to the floor. Alice turned, writhing around in its grasp, hating to look at it but forced to face it so she could push it away. The thing was clawing its way up her body, the mandibles waving.
She bent her leg, bringing her knee up hard and sharp, into its throat—the mandibles retracted a little and the creature shook its head, seemed confused, its grip on her legs loosening. She scuttled backward, kicking at its hands, and got to her feet. It was up almost as quickly, clawing at her, pushing its head forward, trying to get its snapping mandibles within reach…
She smelled the corruption of its dead, decaying innards, the rot it gasped into her face…
Alice teetered on the edge of the top step. The Undead sprang at her, and she recoiled, losing her footing. They both went over, down the stairs. Alice tumbled one way, almost somersaulting down the carpeted steps. The Undead crashed through the wooden banister.
Groaning and winded at the bottom of the stairs, Alice forced herself to stand. No bones seemed broken—but everything ached. She looked for the Undead—and saw that it had impaled itself on the splintered support of a railing, the spike going through its belly and out its back. Rotting black blood seethed up around the wound. The creature struggled, its mandibles helplessly grabbing at air—but it wasn’t going anywhere.
Alice turned—and found herself staring into the red-rimmed, glazed eyes of what had once been her husband.
It was Todd—or what remained of Todd. His white shirt was soaked in blood. His face was the color the shirt had been when she’d gotten it from the dry cleaner’s. Dead white.
“Todd…” The sound of his name escaped from her throat in a whimper.
The Undead Todd stared… For a moment she thought, perhaps, the thing remembered her. She thought it might turn away, and let her go.
And then it struck, grabbing her shoulders in a painful grip, its mouth opened—wider, too wide— ripping open so the mandibles could extrude, sharp as fangs, extending to rip into her face.
All the fight drained from her, and she felt the mandibles crunching through the bone of her skull. Darkness rose up, like the shadows from the depths of the sea, to swallow her alive…
Alice opened her eyes.
She was cold. She felt the chilly air on her bare legs. She was lying on a hard floor—a floor that seemed to glow.
She sat up, moving with a crinkling sound. She was wearing a patient’s garment of thin paper cloth, and nothing else. Her head throbbed.
She was sitting in a high-ceilinged cell, on a plexiglass surface. She had no shoes, no underwear. Light streamed up from below. The plexiglass formed a distinctive eight-sided shape—one she knew very well. It was the outline of the Umbrella Corporation logo.
Becky.
The memory was already fading.
What had it been?
A memory, a fantasy—a dream?
She shook her head. It had seemed too real for any of that. But it couldn’t have been real. She had no husband. She had no daughter. And she didn’t have blond hair.
She saw herself, a muted reflection in one of the glassy panels. She was a brunette.
Alice sighed, and looked around the almost featureless chamber. The octagonal ceiling was at least forty feet above. The walls were glassy, streaming with light, and there was a window, about thirty feet up—well out of reach, now that Wesker had muted her powers.
Flush with the wall across from her was a steel door. At least she assumed it was a door—though it had no hinges, no handle.
She stood up and looked around.
No way out.
6
Alice moved over to the door-shaped rectangle in the wall, felt its edges, looked for a way to open it. A hidden panel, something—anything.
Nothing.
Abruptly, the cell lights switched off, plunging her into darkness. The air was charged with imminence— and after a moment, the smoked window, high in the wall over the door, lit up with a powerful light. In the window, now, was a familiar silhouette. Alice thought she recognized that shape.
Jill Valentine?
Her voice emanated from a speaker overhead.
“Project Alice, who do you work for?” A pause, and then Jill continued, “Project Alice, why did you turn against Umbrella?”
“Jill?” Alice called. “Is that you?”
“Project Alice,” Jill repeated insistently, “Who do you work for?”
Alice ignored the question. She wasn’t in the mood for any “art of interrogation” psychodramas.
“Where are Chris and Claire? Where are the others from the ship?” she demanded.
And then Alice was punished. She was stabbed by sound.
Squealing, hyper loud, painfully shrill feedback filled the room. It was beyond deafening, echoing back and forth between the walls as if it were hitting her face, over and over. Alice clapped her hands t
o cover her ears, but the shrieking noise only increased in pitch, in volume, passing unbearable and reaching what had to be near-lethal intensity.
She hunkered down, putting her head between her knees, trying to block out the sound, wondering if she would come out of this with her hearing permanently damaged. It couldn’t get any worse than this, she thought desperately.
It got worse.
Louder, higher pitched yet…
She writhed on the floor in agony, and then lost consciousness.
Alice woke, finding that she had been moved, somehow, onto a cot. Her ears were still ringing from the sonic assault. Her stomach was roiling with nausea.
The lights were brightly streaming up from the floor. The clinical glow seemed to say, “We are watching you, Alice. This is the light of pure observation.”
The lights suddenly switched off. And even in darkness she felt eyes…
And then the light in the window, Jill Valentine’s silhouette overhead.
“Project Alice, who do you work for?”
“Jill… what happened to you?” Alice asked hoarsely.
“Project Alice, why did you turn against Umbrella?” Jill’s cold, impersonal voice reverberated around the octagonal chamber. “Why… why… did you turn…”
“Jill—answer me! Why are you doing this?”
And the punishment began again. The high-pitched feedback assaulted her so loud she could feel it rattling the bones of her head, vibrating in her chest, shivering her teeth. She fell to her knees, clapping her hands over her ears.
Like Becky—she screamed… and couldn’t hear it.
Alice fell to her side, and the assault on her ears, her whole being, got worse… and worse… until…
Alice woke on the cot, ears ringing, stomach twisting in her belly. She lay there, pretending to be alive.
They weren’t fooled. The lights switched off.
No, Alice thought, sitting up. NO.
Jill Valentine appeared in the window above.
“Project Alice—who do you work for?”
There she is, right on schedule, Alice thought. She stood up, trying to marshal her dignity, her defiance.
She just stared up at the light. Words didn’t help. She knew her face spoke for her. Her eyes said it all.
